Update: Kongming’s ArchivesKongming’s Archives has been offline for something like three or four days now, and I know there hasn’t been much mention of this unexpected outage other than a post or two that many people may not have noticed. This is just an official notice to let everyone know that steps are being taken to bring the site back online, and that all site information is backed up at least to several days prior to the point at which it went offline. This information will be restored to the site after it, itself, is restored.

It is possible Kongming’s Archives may be coming online again under a different server, and that server may use PHP5 instead of PHP4. PHP is the server-side programming language on which Kongming’s Archives relies on for a very large amount of its content. PHP5 deprecated or removed some functionality in PHP4, but to the best of our knowledge all code on the site should be fully forward-compatible.

The next news you read on this matter may very well be on Kongming’s Archives.

As you may have noticed, there has been a surge in commercial spam posts appearing in the forum recently. James has been working hard to block them, but somehow things still managed to sneak in.

Please don't, I repeat, don't, click on the links provided by those advertisement posts, no matter how curious you are about the viagra, porn, dating services, or "business opportunities" that those posts advertise. Clicking on those links can direct more spambots to our direction. Don't bother with responding to them either. But do let one of us know (PM one of the admins or post in the Public Council), and we'll delete the spammy post/account.

We're also keeping track of the information of these spammers (ip, email provider, website, etc), and hope to be able to root out the sources.

"Whatever you do, don't fall off the bridge! It'll be a pain to try to get back up again." - Private, DW 8

Hello, o’ Scholars of Shen Zhou! Today’s update introduces some pretty significant changes relevant to the forum’s leadership team and their availability when you need to speak with someone. As you know, we recently posted a number of moderator application threads in the Public Council. We’ve finished going over them, and have decided to add four moderators to our team! A few other members who posted in those threads are also under consideration for possible second additions to the moderator team later in, or toward the end of, this Summer.

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We have added the following moderators to our team!Please feel free to give them a warm welcome!

Dynasty Warriors Training- Kongming’s Prodigy
- SunXia

Literature Academics and Philosophy- Catalyst

Gamers’ Haven- Marc

Please remember that other members who applied are under consideration for a second round of moderator additions a little later this year! I would like to thank everyone who applied. As you probably know, we don’t usually add many moderators to our team, and our team itself usually remains rather small. Even if you weren’t selected, please don’t despair. You may be under consideration for possible second additions, and there will be other moderator openings in the future (in fact, it is possible another opening or two may appear fairly soon).

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Moderator Position ShiftingChanges made to positions of current moderators.

- SYL has been added to Literature, Academics, and Philosophy
- Sam has been added to the Pub and the Pub, Timeless Threads

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Administrators in the Moderation TeamWe are now adding board administrators as official moderators to the forums they frequent. We are doing this to help you, our members, understand who is best to contact in each area. If you see an Administrator listed as a moderator in an area of the forum, you can contact them with the regular questions or moderation issues that you would have normally shared with a moderator. Below are some of the initial additions, and there may be more in the near future.

- James to Sanguo Yanyi Symposium and Romance of the Three Kingdoms
- Kong Wen to Sanguo Yanyi Symposium, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Dynasty Warriors Training

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Other Noteworthy ChangesModeration for Foreign Kingdoms has been shifted over to the Forum Administration usergroup. This means that the forum’s administrators are the moderator contacts for issues in that forum.

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Inactive ModeratorsThe following moderators have been removed from the moderation team due to inactivity. This has nothing to do with their performance, as we valued the work and contributions of each and every one of them. Each is welcome to contact us in the future if they would like to re-join our team. We thank you very much for the time you shared with us, and for your friendship.

- Cao Zhi
- Jon
- Emily
- animetayl
- Stuart

Thank you so much, all of you. We hope you are well!

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Contacting Moderators in the Future!Why did we make so many changes? First, so issues in the forum are attended to a little more promptly. Our team had become quite sparse in some areas of the forum, and it was starting to show in the way some problems were handled. The most important reason? Every moderator listed in a forum is now an active moderator, and someone you can contact with questions in that forum. This is a standard we are going to maintain, and in the future moderators that go inactive for months will also be removed, with the option of rejoining the team if they start frequenting the forum again.

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Do you have questions? Want to congratulate the new moderators?
<a href="/viewtopic.php?t=15349">We have created this thread for you to share your thoughts!</a>

Spam Bots, Accounts, and Other Such UnpleasantnessIt is my pleasure to announce that today basically spells the end for the spam accounts and spam posts in the forum. Aside from many custom-made modifications to the forum, we have shifted over new member signups to administrator activation. This means every new account created will have to be activated first by one of the administrators. Accounts with unusual or inappropriate content will be declined, as will accounts with any vulgar content. You have probably noticed that there has been no spam for the past few days. We hope to keep this trend going for years to come.

Member Account DeletionI have deleted about fifty member accounts from our database. In months to come, other accounts may be deleted as well. The most recent changes were focused on inactive accounts, either activating them or deleting them, depending on post counts. Once all the other details have been sorted out, all accounts with 0 active posts, three or so months old or more, may be deleted! If you have an account, and use it simply to lurk, please feel free to make a post in the member introduction thread, found in ‘The Pub’, simply to avoid this upcoming deletion. Accounts with active posts, as of now, will not be deleted.

’No Posts Exist For This Forum’ ErrorsI have been working on a solution to this occasional error for over four years now (it comes up when you try to view the last page of certain threads under certain circumstances). I’m happy to let everyone know that I have finally figured it out (it is a phpBB bug that almost nobody knows how to resolve, short of deleting topics) and this error should now be completely purged from Scholars of Shen Zhou.

Scholar of the Month vote: open for business!The Scholar of the Month ‘award’ has been re-opened with some new rules after being out for over a year and a half. Would you like more details? Read <a href="/viewtopic.php?p=342062#342062">this post</a> in the SotM thread! Read the first post of that thread if you are curious exactly what Scholar of the Month really is.

We've added a moderator for the Other Three Kingdoms and Koei Games forum!

- Please welcome Mei Zhen, who will now be a moderator in the hitherto woefully understaffed OTKKG forum.

Just to echo James, we'd like to thank everyone who's expressed interest in helping out in that forum. We're still working on finding the right balance and number of people in the moderation team, and may still add a few more gradually in the upcoming months.

"Whatever you do, don't fall off the bridge! It'll be a pain to try to get back up again." - Private, DW 8

<s>Spring</s> Winter Cleaning!We’ve been around over four years. How about that? I was once told that one year was considered old for an online community, and given how few of my old favorites are still around, I can see some truth in that. As a result, our forum rules/management areas (Public Council and Imperial Edicts) had become a little clogged. I’ve gone through both and cleared out a lot of old information (often-times out-of-date) and old threads, and consolidated all the important details into an all-new Forum Rules and Introduction (featuring everything from the usual entries such as ‘flaming’ on down to Participation Instructions and General Information). Have a look, it should be much easier to read. I’ve also reset both the Interactive Forum FAQ (and updated its actual FAQ) and the Banned User List. It shouldn’t be quite as scary for new members now.

Prune My Heart Away? No More!We have received a number of concerns about good old threads vanishing from the forum. This is because we had a forum pruning routine in effect. Basically, the in certain forums (mostly gaming forums) the software would automatically delete threads that became two months old with no reply. This proved to be inefficient, and I too lost several good threads as a result. Presently, pruning only kicks in after a full half-year, and we are looking into the possibility of turning pruning over in full to our moderators. This change comes as a result of your feedback!

Suggestions and Feedback?Once only for suggestions, our <a href="/viewtopic.php?p=114752">Forum Suggestions and Feedback Thread</a> is now open for business as a home for all your comments and thoughts. Please, constructive criticism only! And please share any thoughts relative to this update as well.

Forum Downtime and Database RestorationAs a result of a ‘critical system failure’ basically everything on our server died. We’ve been migrated to a new server, but unfortunately this resulted in the necessity of restoring the forum using something like a seven-day-old backup. I’m sure we’ve lost a lot of great and well thought out posts as a result, and I’m sad to see this happen. At least we had the backup in place.

ICQ Graphic Now Matches SoSZ ThemeKong Wen seems to think this should be announced.

Your truly has finally gotten off his ass long enough to create an ICQ button that matches the other buttons used in the forum. While I’m sure most of you never use it, or may not even know what it is, you’ve probably all seen it, sticking out like a sore thumb where it appears in threads. And if you’ve entered ICQ into your profile it has probably bothered you to the point you’ve considered removing it (or in Kong’s case, actually did remove it).

Anyway, the universe has found unity once again. All is well.
Clear your cache, reload the page.

April Fools 2007Major events which took place between May 15th, 2007, and April 1st, 2007, including the banning of various forum members and leaders, Kong Wen and lessthanpleased’s revolt, more rights revoked, and my eventual return, were all a game/prank that started with celebration of the date on which Julius Caesar and Cao Cao died, and ended with an April Fools’ prank. None of these bannings, rights restrictions, or other major events were real and they have all been reversed. Our forum leadership has not changed.

Official member warnings issued during this period are real, and stand.